


splinters of your soul, cut through my skin

by LuciferCaelestis



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: 5 stages of grief: tomarry edition, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Character Study, Introspection, M/M, Sane Tom Riddle, Tomarry Reverse Big Bang 2020, but not really, it's really just a bunch of feelings about Harry, what it would be like if Harry and the horcrux actually talked
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-08
Updated: 2020-09-17
Packaged: 2021-03-06 17:42:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 13,491
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26352841
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LuciferCaelestis/pseuds/LuciferCaelestis
Summary: The horcrux has always been aware, and Harry finds out about his horcrux earlier.It changes everything and nothing at the same time.(or canon, featuring Harry's self destructive tendencies and Horcrux Tom as Harry's imaginary not-friend)
Relationships: Harry Potter & Horcrux, Harry Potter & Tom Riddle | Voldemort, Harry Potter/Tom Riddle | Voldemort
Comments: 8
Kudos: 101
Collections: Tomarry Reverse Big Bang 2020





	1. denial

**Author's Note:**

> _...and burrow within_
> 
> This was written for the Tomarry Reverse Big Bang 2020. Thank you to the mods for organising the event! Thank you so much to the artist local_doom_void for drawing the art that inspired this!!! The art will be linked as soon as it's posted. It might be a little (or very!!) different from what I originally came up with but I enjoyed it nevertheless.
> 
> Thank you so much, Mine, for the beta. I don't know what I did to deserve you.
> 
> The title is adapted slightly from become the beast by Karliene, which is very much a tomarry song for me.
> 
> Edit: My partner's art has been posted and you can enjoy it [here](https://kitastrophea.tumblr.com/post/628912507359248384). Please give them some love!!!

It is a fact of Harry’s life that he has never felt alone.

Despite his circumstances, despite the Dursleys, despite everything, he has never once felt alone.

There is a voice that follows him wherever he goes.

A voice in his head, that tells him, _ I am here with you _ .

At first, the voice only has harsh words for him, cutting and dismissive in a way the Dursleys aren’t. He doesn’t remember those days well, he was too young for that.

But it grows softer in time. 

When Dudley breaks his arm and he has to keep going, keep doing his chores, keep pretending it–  _ he _ – doesn’t matter, it comforts him, telling him this will pass one day, and he will be stronger for it.

When Aunt Petunia repeats her rants on his worthlessness, so much that he can recite every word along with her, the voice dismisses her, telling him he’s special.

When Uncle Vernon denies him food, locking him in his cupboard, with nothing but dust and spiders and broken toys, and he’s left alone with his thoughts, the voice reminds him,  _ you’re not alone. _

He’s not alone, he knows that, even if the world is set on proving otherwise.

The voice is the only remarkable thing in Harry’s otherwise dull life, and Harry loves it just as much as he does his scar.

It marks him as special.

And then a letter comes, a door is kicked down, and suddenly there’s  _ magic. _

And suddenly, it’s not just him and the voice anymore.

~

The very first time he sees Hogwarts, Harry thinks,  _ this could be home. _

The voice, somewhat longingly, agrees.

Harry wants nothing more than to belong here, to finally have a place for him, but the Sorting Hat is keen on destroying that.

“Not Slytherin, not Slytherin, not Slytherin,” he begs. “I’m not like him.”

“You could be great, you know. And Slytherin would help you on your way to greatness, just like  _ him _ .”

Time passes by in a crawl, and he remembers his earlier thoughts,  _ what if the hat never sorts him? What if they take it off his head and tell him, “Sorry Mr Potter, it’s a mistake, you don’t belong here”. _

_ Would Slytherin really be so bad,  _ the voice asks,  _ if it meant he could stay. _

And for a moment, he imagines it; the hat yelling, “Slytherin,” and his tie turning green and silver, and himself standing in front of the entire school with his new colors,  _ proud.  _

But then the hat finally concedes, yelling, “Better be Gryffindor!”

And Harry breathes.

The year goes on, and Harry learns to live with the stares and the whispers following him, because here he belongs, here he has friends, here he has  _ magic. _

But then there’s Voldemort. He is a specter that haunts Harry, without needing to be a ghost, because that is the first thing people think of when they see him.

The Boy-Who-Lived.

He can live with that, as long as that’s not all he is.

Except there’s more to this year than just that. There’s Snape, and Fluffy, and the poor dead unicorn in the forest, and he realizes that he will never stop being the Boy-Who-Lived. 

But even with Voldemort’s legacy looming over him like an omen, all his half-thought fears of Voldemort suddenly appearing, it has no match for what it’s actually like, meeting Voldemort for the first time.

The sight of him alone makes Harry’s blood run cold. Something not-quite-human, a parasite leeching off another’s skin.

This was the man who had killed his parents. 

When Voldemort demands for Harry to join him, suggesting that it would be a waste of his parents’ sacrifice, that his parents had  _ begged _ him for mercy, something in Harry burns.

The first mistake. 

_ Never _ , he retorted.  _ I won’t bow to you,  _ his mind says.

And the voice agrees.

Voldemort tries again, bringing up facts that he never knew about his parents but could believe all too easily, how brave they were, how much they must have loved him to want to die for him, and Harry snaps.

Another mistake. 

Before he can escape, Quirrell touches him and it is the greatest pain he has ever felt. His head feels like it is splitting into two, and he wants to scream, but he won’t, because he‘s not giving up, not as long as he still lived. 

All of a sudden, Quirrell lurches back and the pain lessens. He opens his eyes to the sight of Quirrell’s skin blistering right before him.

Voldemort’s biggest blunder yet. 

Voldemort barks out orders but it’s useless as Quirrell burns at Harry’s touch. Over the sound of his agony, Harry can hear someone screaming.

It isn’t until Harry collapses, a ball of pain and agony, that he realises that he’s the one screaming.

~

After the summer, he is alone again, with little food to sustain him and nothing else to make the past months seem less like a fanciful dream. That it was true that magic is real, that he has friends and a place he belongs, and they weren’t all just fantasies of a lonely, miserable child. 

After all, his reality is the Dursleys pretending that he doesn’t exist, or wishing that he didn’t, and not even the voice can help him.

Until a house-elf appears, warning him of danger at Hogwarts, keeping him from all reminders of magic that he could have used, and lands him in greater danger than could ever be found at Hogwarts.

The Weasleys save him, with a flying car breaking him free from his suburban prison, showing him a home he longs for, a family he yearns for.

But greater still, is Hogwarts, his home.

And he thinks, this year, this year should be alright. Whatever dangers there are, he’ll make it through them. But then he hears a voice, and the Chamber of Secrets opens, and things only get worse from there.

Hearing voices no one else can hear isn’t a good sign, even in the wizarding world _ , _ Ron tells him. 

He doesn’t tell Ron and Hermione that he’s used to it. That would mean telling them about the voice, and the voice is his in a way nothing else is.

Being revealed as a parselmouth only feeds into the ever growing dread that he’s been hiding. 

What else connects him to Voldemort?

He forces those thoughts down, pushes his dread away, as he, Ron and Hermione work on solving the mysteries of the chamber. People being petrified left and right, Slytherin’s heir, all those are far, far, far more important than his own inner turmoil. 

And in the midst of the chaos, they end up with a diary by T. M. Riddle.

It heralds the beginning of an obsession for Harry.

For some reason, T. M. Riddle feels familiar, like an old friend he’s known for a very long time, one that he’d almost forgotten until now.

Even though the diary doesn’t reveal anything, Harry can’t help but keep it with him all the time.

Despite his mortification at the poem, he is grateful that it offers him new insight into the diary. As he writes, part of him is already waiting for the next reply, watching out of the corner of his eye for the familiar writing to appear. 

If the diary by itself had felt like a very old half-forgotten friend, Tom Riddle feels like a kindred spirit, a companion that knew him better than he knew himself.

Hearing his experiences strikes a chord in Harry, one that’s never been touched before. 

Even though he feels sorry for Hagrid and trusts that he didn’t do it, he can understand Tom’s desire to settle things, to stay in Hogwarts, a place he belongs. Ron and Hermione wouldn’t understand this, the Dursleys, not with their lives.

But maybe,  _ maybe, _ Tom could.

So when Tom, Tom who he had trusted, who he thought could  _ understand  _ him, turns out to be the one behind all of this? 

Everything hits Harry all at once.

Anxiety and terror, rage, and worst of all is the pain, like someone had twisted a knife in his gut. 

Riddle might as well have. 

He had  _ liked _ Riddle, he realises with dawning horror, had  _ trusted _ him, genuinely.

But Riddle is still talking, still explaining just how much he had played Harry for a fool. His entire plan, to carry on his legacy as Slytherin’s heir long after he left the school, to finish what he’d already started so many years ago.

Harry grasps on that thought, and throws it at him, taunting, because Riddle hasn’t succeeded this year, not at all.

But Riddle doesn’t respond the way he thinks he will. And what Riddle does say chills him to the bone.

“For many months now, my new target has been  _ you _ .”

And he wonders, why would Riddle be so fixated on him, to the extent of replacing all his previous plans?

_ How did you survive? How did you kill him? How did you escape? _

And Tom, just like everyone else, only sees the Boy-Who-Lived.

“Why,” Harry asks, ignoring the gradual horror building up in his mind, “do you care how I escaped? Voldemort came after your time.”

_ Voldemort _ , the voice whispers, and it sounds exactly like Riddle.

“Voldemort,” Riddle says slowly, savouring, “is my past, present and future, Harry Potter…”

And Harry sees flaming letters forming and with a wave of Harry’s wand still in Riddle’s hand, the letters and Harry’s heart breaks.

**‘TOM MARVOLO RIDDLE’**

**‘I AM LORD VOLDEMORT’**

Betrayal. Someone he liked, someone who he felt could have maybe, just maybe, understood, turned out to be  _ Voldemort _ .

He didn’t know if he felt more betrayed by Tom, the orphaned boy who grew up to murder Harry’s parents and fooled him into thinking he was Harry’s friend; or by his own self, for being foolish enough to believe in this boy who grew up to become the monster Harry hated, and liking him anyway.

But Tom is a threat, he knows, and he won’t wait for Harry to work past his feelings. So Harry ignores all of that, ignores that he ever considered Tom a friend, and he answers Tom’s questions, hoping to get it over with quickly, before Ginny faded and Riddle became stronger, a memory made flesh and blood through Ginny’s life. 

But Riddle knew to strike where it hurt the most. He speaks of the similarities between them, the ones Harry thought made them closer, so alike and understanding of each other. 

Harry freezes. 

He cannot look at himself the same way again, just like he can never look at Tom the same way. And he knows this fact will never leave him. 

That the Boy-Who-Lived is the closest to Voldemort himself. 

He waits for Riddle to kill him, using Harry’s own wand–  _ Riddle’s brother wand _ , he recalls absently– but Riddle calls the basilisk instead. 

Maybe it’s a show of superiority, or maybe it’s just a twisted act of mercy, but Riddle commands the basilisk to kill him instead of making any move to do it himself. 

_ Run _ , the voice tells him, and he runs.

At the back of his mind, he wonders if it’s just the basilisk he’s running from, or the boy who still feels all too familiar, his enemy.

With help from Fawkes, Gryffindor’s sword is in his hand, and he faces the blinded basilisk

As he thrusts the sword through its mouth, a piercing pain resounds above his elbow. He looks down to see a single fang, sinking through his arm, poisoning him further with every single beat of his heart.

The pain from the poison hurts, but not as much as the poison from Riddle’s betrayal. 

Fawkes cries for him, and his wounds heals, and Riddle looks all too ready to kill Harry himself, but Fawkes drops the diary into Harry’s arms, and Harry just acts.

With the basilisk fang in hand, he stabs right through the diary, right into the heart and Riddle  _ screams _ .

As the diary shrieks , bleeding ink, as Riddle is writhing and wailing in agony, Harry almost feels like something inside him is screaming too.

He twists the fang even deeper instead.

It’s a relief to hand over the diary to Dumbledore, even more so when Dumbledore assures him that he is as true a Gryffindor as any, that his choices make him different from Tom– from Voldemort.

The voice says,  _ were you really that different?  _

And Harry tries not to think of the fact that it sounds more like Tom than he would ever like to admit.

Still, a part of him can’t forget what Dumbledore said, that Voldemort has put a bit of himself in Harry, and Harry wonders just how much more of himself he will look at and see Voldemort staring back.

~

Harry has hated Voldemort since he learnt of his existence, but he has never feared him.

Not like he does these Dementors.

At first, they only bring the feeling of complete and utter powerlessness he fears, the feeling that he’ll never feel happy again, the memory of screaming that no one else can hear.

Except another encounter happens, and there’s a flash of green light right after his mother’s pleading for mercy, for Voldemort to kill her instead, and he knows why he hates them so much.

The Dementors had helped to evoke the only memory he has of his mother, of her screaming and begging for his life, of her  _ death _ , and this is the most he’s ever remembered of his parents and he hates it as much as he loves it.

His parents had loved him, loved him enough to die for him, and it hurts. They are real now in a way they never were before, and he hates Voldemort all the more for it. 

When he learns about Sirius Black, his betrayal and anger have a new target.

At least, until he finds out the truth. 

Wormtail is a reminder of all that Voldemort has taken from him, but this is one thing he does not blame Voldemort for. Voldemort didn’t force Pettigrew to betray Harry’s parents, but he did, and in doing so, led to their end. 

Voldemort may have killed them, but at least he wasn’t their  _ friend _ .

Even so, he stops Sirius and Lupin from killing him. His parents wouldn’t want them murderers, and while the voice tells him to kill, he does not want to watch another man die tonight.

He regrets it when Wormtail escapes.

Dementors arrive, surrounding them, and he desperately tries to cast his Patronus, latching onto any happy thought he can, trying and trying, but the Dementors close in on them, and he’s alone and his mother is screaming and something else inside him is screaming with her and everything just stops.

The feeling recedes as something drives them away, a bright light pushing them aside until it reaches something–someone– familiar before everything becomes a blur as he blacks out.

He wakes up to news that Sirius has been caught. 

Sirius, his  _ innocent _ godfather, the only family he has left, someone who loved him, about to be given the Kiss because of something he didn’t even do.

So they turn back time and race against the clock to save Sirius.

It’s not enough.

Hundreds of Dementors surround his past self and Sirius, and he waits for a miracle, for his  _ father _ to save them, before realizing almost too late that he has to save himself this time, that it was always him.

And there he is, Prongs. His father, guarding over him once more.

As he watches his godfather fly away with Buckbeak, he wonders how much more he has to lose to Voldemort.

~

Harry had been prepared for an uneventful year. Unfortunately, the year had other plans.

His unexpected entry into the Tournament turns the school against him, and Ron with it, and there’s a part of Harry that just hurts, that just hates, because he never wanted any of this.

But what else could he do, except brave the tasks anyway. He faces down a dragon, jumps straight into the lake of merpeople and tries to prepare for a maze impossible to prepare for.

The voice is ever-silent, except as a warning. 

_ Do not trust anyone _ , it says,  _ make them pay for doubting you,  _ and Harry is two-steps away from listening to it.

But Voldemort still lurks in the back of his mind, and then he reaches the middle of the maze, the start of everything going wrong. 

The Cup is there, unclaimed, and out of courtesy, a sense of respect, he tells Cedric to take the Cup with him, before the whole world spins and they’re in a graveyard.

Cedric dies because of Voldemort’s orders, because of Wormtail, because of Harry’s weakness, in a flash of green light all too reminiscent of his mother’s death.

Harry is then tied to a grave marked with a name he knows all too well, pain searing through his head and struggling helplessly, as Voldemort’s resurrection begins.

His blood marks the end of the ritual, and as Harry hopes for the worst, for Voldemort–the creature he has become– to have drowned, steam billows from the cauldron and through the mist Harry sees a tall skeletally-thin figure of a man rise from it.

And unlike Tom, whose humanity had surprised him, Lord Voldemort himself is more than inhuman enough to make up for it.

Naturally, his scar burns, through Voldemort’s talk of his–Tom’s–history, through the arrival of the Death Eaters.

But when Voldemort turns to him, his attention focused on Harry and Harry alone, his scar feels like it’s on fire. Voldemort comes closer, gloating above Harry’s defeated body and then Voldemort touches Harry–

  
–and Harry can barely  _ breathe _ through the pain.

Voldemort explains, graciously, the many events he set into motion, how he’d ruined Harry’s life yet again, before waving his wand and uttering ‘Crucio’. 

If Harry’s head had been on fire, now it was his entire body engulfed in flames, frost, frozen and thawed and burning and broken, over and over and over again. More than anything he wanted it to end, he wanted to  _ die _ , but then it was gone and he was still hanging from the headstone, wishing for death.

The voice tells him to fight, and he wants to yell, wants to know  _ how. _

And then, it stops and Wormtail is untying him. For a moment, Harry considers escaping, before his injured leg reminds him of the futility of running.

Voldemort brandishes a hand towards him mockingly, an invitation to a duel. 

Harry is up on his feet now, barely, and Voldemort tells him to bow, and he and the voice are in agreement, that he will not bow to someone he considers unworthy, and Voldemort pushes him down into a bow anyway and he hates–

The Cruciatus hits him again before he can finish the thought, and his mind is empty of anything save the pain. 

Voldemort is going to kill him, and make a play of it first, but Harry will never beg. 

As if dissatisfied with Harry’s response, Voldemort casts the Imperius curse and for a moment Harry is happy and blissful, and willing to do anything to stay that way, but the voice inside him refuses to obey.

And so Harry doesn’t. 

Voldemort stops his little game, shocked, but Harry is different, already ducking and dodging attacks despite knowing that he's only prolonging the inevitable.

When Voldemort raises his wand for the final strike, Harry raises his as well, ‘Expelliarmus,’ meeting Voldemort’s ‘Avada Kedavra’ head on. 

To their combined shock, their wands are vibrating, a beam of golden light connecting one to the other. Into the air, they are lifted up, with the gleaming light splintering until they are encased in a golden dome. 

From the light, phoenix song fills the air. 

Through this connection, ghosts of the past appear from Voldemort’s wand, from Cedric Diggory, to an old man Harry saw once in a dream, to Bertha Jorkins, to his mother, and finally his father.

They tell him to hold on, to be ready to run, to keep going, so he does.

He holds on, until the connection is broken, and he runs, dodging every single spell sent his way until he reaches Cedric’s body.

_ Leave him, _ the voice tells him, but he doesn’t, not until he manages to Summon the Cup and the Portkey takes them back to Hogwarts.

Bright lights and cheerful song greet his return, but he is lost and unsteady, aching in more ways than one. It takes every last bit of strength for him to break the news. Only then does he finally let go of Cedric.

Voldemort has returned and there’s a very real threat now to the wizarding world. The dull throbbing of his scar is a quiet reminder of worse things to come.

  
  



	2. anger

In the aftermath, his memories are fuzzy, the last night of the Tournament as well as those last final days at Hogwarts. What he most clearly recalls is the ache of the pain, and the weight of Cedric’s body in his arms.

Too soon, he’s back at the Dursleys again, and there is no room for anything but their demands and orders. 

He tries to stay updated, rips The Prophet to shreds hoping for news, that Fudge’s claims of denial won’t stay, but there’s nothing that indicates any news of Voldemort’s return, so he turns to Muggle news, even when getting caught means punishment and he already has far too many of those.

He’s just so angry all the time now. 

His only company nowadays is the voice that has always been with him.

Voldemort isn’t just a specter of the past, but a very real threat now and no one is acknowledging it. 

Not The Daily Prophet, hiding and pretending this doesn’t exist; not his friends who tell him nothing but platitudes and empty news; not Dumbledore, who hasn’t acknowledged him in the slightest since he brought back news of Voldemort’s resurrection.

All the letters he receives are full of warnings and unhelpful hints.

‘Stay put,’ they say, ‘Don’t do anything reckless.’ 

When he is the one who had to face that monster, when he is the one  _ responsible _ for Voldemort’s return, when he can almost feel him at the back of his mind. 

He is sick and tired of doing nothing but  _ wait _ .

_ Calm down _ , the voice says,  _ this is not your hill to die on.  _

But Harry can’t be calm, can’t be stuck here waiting and wondering if today will be the day they realize the truth. 

The day Voldemort will crush them the way he had Harry, that day in the graveyard. 

The day another person, another innocent, like Cedric, will die.

His dreams are always nightmares, with Cedric dying and Voldemort rising from that cauldron again and again, and when they aren’t, they are cryptic and unsettling, full of dark corridors and dead ends and they haunt him, long after he wakes up.

He tries to turn it back on Dudley, during a rare night walk with just the two of them. Wanting to make someone else just as frustrated as he is now, he kept pushing and pushing and pushing, but then the night is suddenly far too cold and he realises that something is  _ wrong. _

In the scuffle, Dudley disarms him of his wand and runs right at the Dementors, but his tries don’t work and the spell dies out every time and he can hear the sound of his mother screaming, a green flash of light before his body is torn apart,  _ his soul cracking and falling to pieces _ , and he thinks of his parents, of how much they loved him and casts the Patronus one last time. 

Prongs comes as he always does, and Harry wonders, when did he ever feel the weight of his body and soul tearing apart?

~

Dumbledore had him watched, when he was younger.

Underneath the astonishment, Harry only feels anger and a bitter sense of disappointment. Dumbledore had him watched, which meant Dumbledore  _ knew _ , and he still left him.

He feels a very real sense of kinship with Riddle, in that moment. 

Harry is dazed under the weight of that realization, even as he hefts Dudley’s unmoving body up against his own, as a man called Mundungus makes himself known, apparently assigned to watch him on Dumbledore’s orders. 

Mrs Figg scolds Mundungus, and brushes off Harry’s questions.

She calls him a fool for never realizing it, that Dumbledore wouldn’t just let him go unfettered after what had just happened, but he wants to ask, why wouldn’t he? When no one is telling him much of anything at all?

A quieter voice inside him wants to ask her, if she knew, about him, and the Dursleys, and how they treated him, why was he still–

He doesn’t. There’s no point, this much, he knows.

She leaves, and whatever answers or help he hoped to receive follow her.

Dudley’s state does not help him with his aunt and uncle, and the following letters he gets after only condemn him further.

His attempts to get information from his friends about what he’s supposed to do, about anything, fail entirely and as the days pass, he just feels so very trapped. His moods have become either restless with rage or utterly lethargic in his resignation.

Before he can do something completely reckless, the Order turns up, and he wastes no time leaving with them.

Relief hits him upon the arrival at their destination, Sirius’s ancestral home turned secret base, Grimmauld Place; finally around people who care about him, finally getting to  _ know _ what exactly is going on. 

It is less so when he’s finally faced with Ron and Hermione, and he has to confront the feelings he’s been stewing in for the past few weeks, stuck at the Dursleys while they were here, at the center of everything. 

Despite himself, he lashes out at them, wanting them to feel just how badly they screwed up,  _ just how much they had hurt him _ . Their attempts at explaining themselves just add to the flames.

He isn’t sure if it’s being kept in the dark, ignorant and helpless, that eats at him; or the feeling that he can’t be trusted, not even to take care of himself as it had been rapidly made apparent, what with the  _ guards _ who had been following him,  _ who he hadn’t even merited knowing about. _

He’s not proud of the way his fury comes out, masking his hurt, but at the very least, it gets him his answers.

The rest of the Order is not nearly as forthcoming, seeming to see him somewhere between helpless child and Boy-Who-Lived, keeping to Dumbledore’s instruction to  _ not tell him anything more than he needs to know _ , and it rankles. 

How can they treat him like this when he can still see the graveyard in his dreams at night, and his mind doesn’t feel entirely his own, and rage is still curdling in his gut. 

When he  _ knows _ this is not nearly the end, and Voldemort won’t be leaving him alone as they seem so keen to think.

~

Being back at Hogwarts was supposed to help.

Hogwarts is still home, but something is different this year. Maybe it’s the looming specter of Voldemort hanging over all of them after his return, or maybe it’s the way that the other students couldn’t meet his eyes, whispers and stares following him even more than they had last year.

_ Liar _ , he remembers,  _ deranged and attention-seeking _ , in the words of the Daily Prophet. 

For a tournament he’d had no intention of participating in, and now for a truth he wished was a lie with all his heart. 

He shouldn’t have expected any better, the school had turned against him before, when they’d thought he was the Heir of Slytherin, and again, when they thought he had cheated his way into a deadly tournament. 

Why wouldn’t they think the worst of him now, when he came back from the maze clutching the dead body of a schoolmate, claiming that the worst Dark Lord of the century had returned to full power. 

Even if the truth had been announced to them, it apparently didn’t matter in the face of the Daily Prophet’s campaign against him. 

Really, what should have he expected? 

That doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt to be accused of being one by Seamus, someone who had lived in the same dorm as him for years, who should have  _ known _ Harry enough to believe him, his friend.

But Seamus’s accusations weren’t even the worst he would face, as Harry finds out in his first Defence lesson of the year.

Umbridge, it seemed, was keen on making sure none of them ever tried anything beyond Ministry approved regulations, even if it meant stifling them and treating them like children. 

Her words are infuriating, the way she wants to keep them all ignorant of the truth is all too clear, and Harry’s self control, frayed as it has been the past few months, snaps.

She refutes everything he says, naming him little better than a liar, and when she lies about Cedric Diggory’s death, who he dreams about still, whose death haunts him because it’s _his_ _fault,_ he finds that he doesn’t care what she’ll do to him in return and he stands his ground.

So he accepts the detentions she gives him, accepts her sickly-sweet insinuations that he’s an attention-seeking liar, accepts the quill she gives him without a word in his defence. 

Harry accepts the quill, and he starts writing, even as it burns him to accept this farce.

When the letters carve into the skin of his hand, the pain of it shocking and sudden, he does not say a word.

The voice says,  _ do not show weakness, do not let her win _ , and for all that it sounds eerily like Riddle sometimes, he does not disagree. 

He doesn’t want her to feel like she’s winning, after all.

So he continues, writing line after line, and feeling it carve into his own skin, the pain just as intense as it was the first time, as his skin heals and breaks over and over again.

_ I must not tell lies _ , his hand says, as he mutilates himself. 

He can feel the words like a brand on his mind as they appear on the parchment he’s been working over, endless rows written in his own blood and will.

He does not stop over the next few nights, even when the words on his hand stop healing, even when blood starts dripping from his hand, even when he tears the wounds open with his relentless work.

He can’t give in, not when she looks so satisfied at the mark she’s leaving on him. 

It’s more than a matter of pride now, it’s a matter of will, and he’s not letting her win. He may be doomed to carry these unwanted scars, but he chose this battle and he will not give in.

~

His temper is more volatile than ever this year, but he manages. 

He finds an outlet for his helplessness in Dumbledore’s army, at the thought that he’s actually doing something, even if it’s just helping his fellow students to protect themselves.

Even though he hadn’t wanted it in the beginning, it helps to tell them the truth about Voldemort, to be believed when he says the threat is real. He takes to teaching with a fervour he had never expected of himself and he enjoys it. 

Things are going well, so he is completely unprepared for Voldemort’s next move.

He is no stranger to dreaming from a different person’s perspective, not with how often he’s woken up with visions of Voldemort, with Voldemort’s actions feeling like his own. He has never been a snake before, but it feels so natural to glide and slither across the floor through a dark corridor.

Natural to flick his tongue to scent the air, tasting the scent of a man as he does so.

Natural to long to bite, to clamp down with his powerful jaws and release his venom. 

Natural to strike, when he’s accomplished his mission, to bite down and sink his fangs into soft flesh and feel the crack of bone and the gush of blood.

He takes no notice of the way the man cries out in pain, or how he slumps against the wall eventually, because there’s a pain in his forehead that is only getting stronger. 

He comes awake slowly, dazed, and he can almost hear people calling his name. The pain only intensifies, he can barely see straight. 

He pushes himself past that, because he has to warn them, that there’s been an attack. 

People try to dismiss it as a dream, that he’s mistaking it for something else in his sickness, but Harry can’t accept it. It had felt so real, the snake’s fangs, Harry’s fangs biting into skin,  _ Mr Weasley’s _ skin, a man who had been nothing but kind to him, treating him like family every time they met.

_ Calm down _ , the voice tells him, but Harry is too far gone for that. 

Pain and fear mix together, and it’s all he can do to keep walking when all he wants is to wake up and have everything not be real.

McGonagall takes them straight to Dumbledore, who ignores him the way he has been the past few months, and asks the most annoyingly perceptive questions, forcing Harry to admit that he saw the attack from the snake’s perspective, before moving on to give his orders. 

He tries not to think of it, the way it felt to strike and bite and hurt, because it still feels all too natural and it was  _ Mr Weasley _ , who could die because of this and Harry would have felt it, would have half-killed him–

Harry can’t help the shame he feels when the rest of the Weasleys appear in Dumbledore’s office, looking frightened and lost. 

He doesn’t look at them, hoping they can’t see the blood he can almost feel still lingering in his mouth.

Dumbledore tells them what happened, before inviting them to touch the Portkey he created. Right before it activates, in the split second before, as Dumbledore looks him in the eye for the first time in months, Harry’s scar burns, and he feels hatred in his heart, along with the urge to strike, to bite, to  _ kill _ the man in front of him.

He wants to sink his fangs into Dumbledore’s skin and crush him, and it feels just as natural as it had in that dream–vision.

The Portkey activates then, but Harry just feels afraid. 

_ Calm down _ , the voice tells him again, but he can still feel the taste of skin and blood in his mouth. 

  
  



	3. bargaining

In a different situation, Harry would have been happy to come back to Grimmauld Place, ecstatic to see Sirius again. But it’s not, and the reality of the situation is somber and tense.

Harry watches as the Weasleys argue with Sirius, frantic and desperate to know more about their father. 

Guilt and shame curdle in his gut, because of course he’s the reason they can’t go see him yet, they can’t let Voldemort know Harry can see through his eyes, even though he had been right there, he had  _ felt _ the way Mr Weasley’s ribs had broken, how his blood had come gushing out, how it felt when he stopped struggling and the life slowly drained out of him.

They would not be in this situation if it weren’t for him, and even if he had helped in alerting Dumbledore about the attack, it doesn’t change the fact that  _ he _ was the one behind it. 

Even if he consoles himself, thinking that he isn’t, he was just  _ sleeping _ , it was a vision, a dream, how does that explain how he felt in Dumbledore’s office, the way he’d yearned to bite and tear and kill.

Hours pass and Harry doesn’t even realize it until there’s finally news, feeling not just like an intruder on their grief, but something even worse, the one behind their pain. 

Mrs Weasley’s thanks feel like a jab, a slap. She’s so grateful to him, she actually believes that Mr Weasley is still alive because of him, that they would have been too late without Harry.

_ Don’t thank me! _ Harry wants to cry out.  _ I was the one who attacked him!  _

He feels like he’s going mad, like there’s something inside him that’s been lurking, and now it’s ready to kill.

He doesn’t sleep, can’t sleep, not if it means he’ll become the snake again, not if it means waking up to find that he’d attacked Ron, or any of the others. Waking up to find their blood in his mouth, their lives fading away under his hand.

He already had Mr Weasley’s blood on his hands. He didn’t want any more.

Seeing Mr Weasley recovering is a relief, and he almost thinks things will be alright… 

Until he overhears the Order. 

They are suspicious of what happened, how he could be possessed, and it reaffirms every worry he’s had since the attack happened. Especially, he thinks with a sinking feeling as the rest of the Weasleys look at him in horror, since everyone else heard them say it too.

Harry realises now that despite all his thoughts and fears and worries, he’d had a bit of hope that maybe it’s not his fault, maybe he isn’t the reason for this. That’s all gone now.

He looks down at his hands, which are shaking, and tries to stop thinking.

He was right, he realises, that Dumbledore didn’t trust him. 

Of course he had a guard, of course Dumbledore never met his eyes,  _ he _ was the weapon Voldemort was trying to use. 

It was all an attempt to protect other people from him, and they can’t tell him anything for fear of Voldemort finding out. 

Was Dumbledore expecting it? Had he always suspected this could happen? 

Would it be silent and unnoticeable, like just two nights ago, where Harry hadn’t even noticed that he was attacking someone dear to him? 

Or would it be blatant, and Harry would be a prisoner in his own mind, green eyes turning scarlet, a weapon against everyone he loves?

He has never felt so dirty at the thought that Voldemort could be inside him, watching him, listening to everything he’s thinking about. He could be an unwitting spy, Voldemort could have already gotten so much information about the Order and their efforts, all because Harry couldn’t bear to be left out.

He can’t be trusted with anything now, and he can’t be put in a position where he could possibly hurt anyone else. He’s just about to run when he’s stopped by Phineas Nigellus Black, who tells him Dumbledore has something to say to him.

He waits, clutching on to the hope that Dumbledore would know what to do, that Dumbledore will stop him from hurting anyone.

They are effectively dashed when Dumbledore only tells him to stay where he is, the way he had when Harry was attacked by Dementors. Again, Harry is expected to do absolutely nothing while the adults sort it out and they still won’t tell him a single thing!

He is terrified and confused and exhausted; he’s had no sleep since the attack happened, but he can’t sleep, he won’t, just in case it happens again. 

He can’t trust himself in his own skin, not when he can still feel the anger and hatred he’d felt in Dumbledore’s office, not when the feeling of his fangs piercing skin and blood feel far too natural.

Eventually, he can no longer fight his own exhaustion, falling into a restless sleep.

~

Harry wakes up alone, a world of shadows around him.

From the darkness, a shapeless mass twists and turns until it forms the outline of a man. 

“What are you?” Harry asks. “ _ Who _ are you?”

The shadows shift until they take the form of an adult Tom Riddle, features oddly distorted.

“Voldemort?” Harry cries out in horror.

And they shift again, taking the form of the Voldemort of his nightmares.

Harry takes a step back, fingers clenching, wishing he had his wand with him, but then the shadows twist again, before settling, finally into the Tom Riddle as Harry knew him from the diary. 

The only thing that marred his resemblance to Riddle were his eerie red eyes Harry had only ever seen on Voldemort, and the lightning scar on his face that matched the one on Harry’s own exactly.

“Riddle?” he asks. Taking a step back, eyeing Riddle warily, he continues hesitantly, “Tom?”

Riddle inclines his head.

“Where are we? Why are we here?” Harry asks, looking around, seeing nothing but endless inky blackness. Suspicions peaking, his voice turns sharp, “What are you?” 

“Nowhere. Everywhere,” Riddle replies simply, like Harry will understand him. 

“Because of you,” he continues to answer, taking another step with every word, before he smirks mockingly at Harry. “And I am exactly what you think I am. The voice in your head, your worst nightmare.” 

Riddle steps closer, until they are mere breaths apart. “Your closest companion. The connection you share with Lord Voldemort.”

“The voice in my head–” Harry repeats, before flushing, demanding, “–the connection I have with Voldemort?! Are you the one that’s been controlling me? Are you the reason I’ve been feeling and acting this way?” Harry’s voice drops to a whisper. “Like  _ Voldemort. _ ” 

“No, Harry,” Riddle says, stepping back and circling him. “I’m afraid you play just as great a part in this as I do. Both of us are equally to blame.”

Harry stares at him in disbelief.

“Are you surprised?” Riddle asks, and Harry jerks away from his touch, all but running away from him. “We share a  _ connection.  _ And we are so very similar after all.” 

Riddle’s delight at Harry’s reaction is almost tangible. Harry stands his ground, keeping a safe distance between them.

“Both half-bloods,” Riddle says, an echo of the diary, taking a step closer to Harry. 

Harry steps back, wary. 

“Both orphans,” Riddle adds, a mocking smile on his face as he takes another step closer and Harry freezes because  _ how could he when _ – 

“Both raised by muggles.” 

Another step.

“Even our wands are brothers.” 

Riddle takes a few more steps and he is behind Harry now, so close that Harry’s back is right against Riddle’s chest, and Harry is suddenly all too aware of his presence, his warmth.

Harry wants to struggle away from him but for some reason he just  _ can’t move. _

“There is no part of me–” Voldemort croons, lifting his arm towards Harry’s face, his fingers caressing the skin; the touches are gentle but unnerving, slowly spreading across Harry’s body “–that is not a part of you.” 

Harry’s hand grips Riddle’s wrist, stopping the caresses– and Harry hates how he misses the touch for a single moment– but it’s too late, the darkness is spreading all over him and he doesn’t know where he ends and Voldemort begins.

The wand in his hand shifts, from supple holly to bone-like yew, and it’s just another reminder of how Voldemort has tainted him, of how  _ similar _ they are.

Brother wands, with a tail feather from the very same phoenix. 

Wands that wouldn’t even fight each other properly.

“And you hate it,” Voldemort says, as the shadows retreat from Harry’s skin, leaving him himself again. “Don’t you?”

Harry refuses to answer, struggling against his grip.

“Remember now, every time you learnt about another thing connecting you, every time you woke up from a vision you saw through his eyes. Are you afraid, Harry Potter? Are you afraid that you are just like me?”

Harry recoils, finally managing to push him away. “I’m nothing like you!”

“So you say, Harry. But I’ve known you longer than you’ve known yourself. When you were sad, I was the one who comforted you; when you were happy, I shared in your joy; when you were scared, I protected you, and when you were lonely… I was always with you.”

Harry does not know what to say, or feel. There is fear and dread, guilt and disgust, and–

_ All this time he’s been with me.  _

All this time when Harry had so feared this connection he had with Voldemort from afar, feared Voldemort taking over his mind from the outside, when all along, Voldemort had actually been with him since the beginning.

It sounded like a twisted joke.

“Leave me alone,” Harry pleads, “and I’ll leave you alone.”

He doesn’t want to think about this. It has to be a nightmare. It has to.

“You are never alone, Harry,” Riddle says, in a mockery of the voice that comforted him so long ago. “But as you wish.”

The world dissolves into shadows around them.

~

When he wakes up, the words linger in his mind. 

He doesn’t leave his room, but by the following evening, he still isn’t sure if the encounter was even real, or just a nightmare brought on by his fears. It certainly seemed unlikely, and Harry can’t imagine any part of Voldemort treating him like the specter had.

And then Hermione arrives, bringing with her a new perspective. 

If the encounter was real, then it was a different kind of threat. If it wasn’t, it still didn’t rule out Voldemort possessing him.

It still stings, knowing his friends are discussing him behind his back—like the Order— but perhaps it’s for the best.

Hermione isn’t the only one with something to say. Ginny manages to shock some sense into him by reminding him of her own experience with possession. 

He’d forgotten entirely, and he feels some relief of having a concrete experience to match his own against.

Based on her words, Harry has not been facing any of the signs she had when she had been possessed by Riddle. In spite of his relief, Harry can’t help but bring up the dream about the snake attacking, but Hermione refutes him, saying there’s no possible way managed to transport him to commit the attack and back.

Ron confirms it further, stating that he saw Harry in his bed, thrashing around in his sleep from his vision even before Harry woke up.

Harry almost feels hopeful when he recalls the dream, and his encounter with the voice, the Tom Riddle in his head.

_ Have you ever heard a voice only you can hear _ , he nearly asks her.  _ It doesn’t make you  _ do _ anything, it just… talks to you. Like a friend. Or maybe an enemy.  _

But he remembers Ron’s words from Second Year, about hearing voices no one else can hear being a bad sign even in the wizarding world, and he can’t bear to.

It’s probably just a dream.

Some days later, Snape comes along, offering him lessons in Occlumency on Dumbledore’s behalf, a way to defend his mind from external forces. 

Reflecting over all the instances where it could have helped, like all those times he’d had a vision from Voldemort’s eyes, or this recent occasion where everyone had worried he’d been possessed by Voldemort, he accepts gratefully. 

If Occlumency could help with the irrational anger he’s been feeling, the unwanted side-trips he takes into Voldemort’s mind, the nightmares that confound his sense of reality, then it can only be a good thing. Even if it means extra lessons with Snape. In this case, Dumbledore would know best.

_ You are not alone, Harry _ , he remembers hearing, and he shudders.

Another defence between him and Voldemort would be better for everyone involved.

~

Occlumency with Snape goes as well as he could expect; which is to say, not at all.

It confirms his fears, that Voldemort can enter his mind, just like Harry can enter his. 

Harry can see the appeal of being able to spy on Voldemort, having early warning on Voldemort’s actions could be crucial, life-saving even. Voldemort being able to enter his mind at will, having access to Harry’s thoughts and emotions when he is vulnerable, or even worse, being able to control Harry, would be devastating.

Finally, his question is answered on why he was the snake that night; Voldemort had been possessing the snake at the time, and Harry had just so happened to tag along, an unsuspecting intruder in Voldemort’s mind.

Even Snape acknowledges the connection between him and Voldemort, and it tears at Harry; the more he hears of it, the more true it becomes and he hates it. Even so, to have  _ Voldemort _ aware of the connection between them, it made him feel tainted and dirty in a whole new different way.

Snape dismisses his efforts all too easily, and he catches glimpses of Harry’s memories every attempt until the day Snape lets him go. His scar is prickling, but still he is excited upon the weight of his realization, that whatever Voldemort was looking for was in the Department of Mysteries. 

The prickling only gets worse, until it feels like his head is splitting open. 

Then it hits him, a feeling of utter bliss. he can’t even remember his own name, all he knows is that he is so very happy, happier than he has ever been. When he comes to, breathless from laughing, he can only warn Ron. 

Voldemort was happy, and that was never a good sign.

The mass Azkaban breakout is the beginning of the end.

Dumbledore is ousted soon after, and his Occlumency lessons prove ineffective. His scar aches more often than not, and his visions of Voldemort,  _ as Voldemort _ , come so frequently he almost confuses them for reality. Sometimes, he looks in the mirror and half-expects to see verdant green turn snake-like red.

Somehow, he manages to carry on until OWLs. 

But in the middle of his final exam, History of Magic, he has a vision of Voldemort torturing Sirius in the depths of the Department of Mysteries. No, he feels  _ himself _ torturing Sirius, threatening him in between bouts as he does so, having no doubt he would kill Sirius in the end.

As soon as it’s over, Harry jumps at the chance to save him. 

He immediately tells Ron and Hermione, who aren’t quite as eager. Hermione, in particular, as she tries to get him to see that it could be a trap, that Voldemort knows him well enough to think that this is something that would get Harry to go.

He knows it’s possible, but Ron and Hermione weren’t the ones who’d been seeing Voldemort’s actions,  _ experiencing them _ like Harry was for the past year. 

Even now, he can still feel the curse on his lips, how it felt to torture Sirius. 

And he knows Voldemort, Voldemort wouldn’t hesitate to drive Sirius out of his mind, wouldn’t hesitate to kill because he’s felt Voldemort’s utter lack of remorse before, and he doesn’t want to see it happen to Sirius.

His scar keeps throbbing as they try other ways to contact Sirius just in case it’s a trap, but it gets them caught by Umbridge, and Snape is no help. They take care of Umbridge and cobble together a plan to save Sirius. 

He tries to dissuade his friends from following him, but they prove stubborn as he is and he accepts, reluctantly.

_ It’s a trap _ , the voice warns, but Harry ignores it the way he has been every other word the voice says to him.

They fly to the Ministry and get all the way to the Department of Mysteries, to the edge of row ninety-seven, only to be greeted by the sight of empty aisles, no sign of a struggle and a glass ball bearing Harry’s name.

  
  



	4. depression

Harry’s decisions, Harry’s recklessness has led all of his friends to their demise. 

_Stupid, stupid, stupid!_ he thinks while Death Eaters surround them, outnumbering them, caring about nothing but the glass sphere in Harry’s hand, the prophecy.

Lucius Malfoy, as smug and insufferable as his son, taunts Harry about his ignorance, about the reason his parents died and he was left with a scar, the reason why Voldemort targeted him in the first place.

Harry doesn’t have time to care though, he and his friends have to fight.

Wands out, they’re all running, attacking, shielding, hitting back everything the Death Eaters throw at them. There are more shouts of ‘Crucio’ than Harry would like to count, all luckily dodged or blocked, and he wouldn't be surprised if someone decided to throw around Killing Curses next. 

The only consideration the Death Eaters show is towards the prophecy, taking extra care not to break it as they aim at Harry and his friends. 

They are about to lose hope when the Order arrives and it’s no longer just a scraggly group of teens against more experienced— and certainly more ruthless— Death Eaters. The odds begin to tip in their favor. 

And everything seems to go fine, they seem to be winning this fight, until the prophecy breaks.

From its fractured pieces, a voice rises. But their surroundings are too chaotic, Harry can’t hear a single word, Dumbledore is here now, and then—

Sirius dies.

And a part of Harry’s heart dies with him. 

Or at least, it feels that way.

He doesn’t believe it at first, can’t believe it, how could Sirius die when he was just there in front of Harry, fighting and shouting and alive. But moments pass, minutes that feel like forever, and Sirius was still gone, and Harry knows there’s no denying it. 

Sirius would never return. 

He does not cry. He is hurting though, and this time, this time he can make someone hurt just as much as he is. 

He sees Bellatrix Lestrange, and there couldn’t be a better target. Horrible, despicable woman who hadn’t spared a thought towards the death of her own flesh and blood, who had _laughed_ as she killed the closest thing to a parent Harry had.

She _deserves_ to hurt.

He attempts the Cruciatus, and it works, how can it not, when he’s felt it before in Voldemort’s head. He laughs and jeers at her pain, revelling in her panic when he tells her that she failed and the prophecy was smashed, feeling satisfied, even as his scar feels like it’s searing open.

Voldemort arrives, and who else faces him but Dumbledore, and their duel begins, and Harry is both terrified and in awe.

In the end, Voldemort disappears, and it seems the battle has ended at last.

Except Harry cries out, as a sharp bolt of pain hits him like a lightning strike. Harry’s head is splitting open, beginning from his scar, and all he wants to scream and scream until the pain goes away. 

Amidst the pain, Harry feels their bond, the connection between him and Voldemort. The two of them are so bound together he has no idea where Voldemort ends and he begins. His body speaks, and it’s Voldemort talking, telling Dumbledore to kill him, and Harry agrees, just let it end, and let them both die here, so he can find peace, and see Sirius again.

But the voice says, _no._ And together, their combined strength drives Voldemort away.

After, he absently notes that Fudge witnessed Voldemort’s return, that quite a few people did. He’s sent to Dumbledore’s office, where he waits, where he can stew in the fact that Sirius’s death is his fault, due to his stupidity. 

_I’m sorry,_ the voice says quietly, _for your loss._

He does not reply. He has nothing to say anymore.

When Dumbledore speaks, it feels like a condemnation of just how much damage he’d caused. He’s relieved that his friends will be alright, but the fact still hangs over Harry’s head: Sirius is dead, and it’s all Harry’s fault.

When Dumbledore tries to empathize, tries to tell him he knows how Harry feels, Harry explodes. Every word out of Dumbledore’s mouth agitates him further, and as he shouts and screams and breaks Dumbledore’s things, all he wants to do is run, so he doesn’t have to think about the empty space in him where Sirius once was.

Dumbledore refuses to let him out, assigns himself the blame for Sirius’s death and finally, starts to explain. Dumbledore talks, again, about the connection between Harry and Voldemort, the one that’s been haunting him for so long, and why he had ignored Harry the past year.

It frightens Harry, that even Dumbledore had noticed how deeply connected they were, that he had noticed how irrationally angry he’d felt, like Harry had been tapping into Voldemort’s emotions rather than his own. 

Dumbledore had known just how dangerous it was to be near Harry, and he’d been right that it had worked. Voldemort had proven that he could utilize their connection to his own ends, using Harry and his ‘saving people thing’ against himself, leading to Sirius’s death.

Harry is still a fire only temporarily doused, and as Dumbledore keeps talking, the fire sparks again.

But then, Dumbledore finally tells him the reason behind Voldemort’s attack on his family: the prophecy.

_The one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord approaches... born to those who have thrice defied him, born as the seventh month dies... and the Dark Lord will mark him as his equal, but he will have power the Dark Lord knows not... and either must die at the hand of the other for neither can live while the other survives... the one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord will be born as the seventh month dies..._

He does not respond right away to Dumbeldore, he doesn’t respond at all in fact. His mind is too numb, his body too cold, as he starts to understand what this means.

He was the reason his parents had died. Due to Voldemort’s fear of a vanquisher, Harry had led him straight to their home, to their deaths.

His parents had truly died for him. 

And now, so had Sirius.

Who next?

Harry is so very tired of people dying for him.

~

Upon hearing of the prophecy, Harry had expected _something_ in the aftermath of such a revelation. It was a responsibility he had taken upon himself, but he had expected Dumbledore to offer something in way of preparation. Lessons on dueling, or strategy, something along those lines to help him.

He didn’t expect to be shown memories, especially not, as he retrospectively realizes, memories of Voldemort’s beginning.

Seeing Voldemort’s father, _Tom’s_ father, had been eye-opening; the two looked so alike they could have been twins.

Meanwhile, Voldemort’s mother, Merope Gaunt, had been pitiful. With her, Harry saw a version of himself that could have been, had he only had the Dursleys and their tender care for 18 years on end, with no hope of anything better.

He doesn’t need Dumbledore’s prompting to guess what had happened next. 

These were mere guesses, but it was very likely Merope had used a love potion on Tom Riddle Senior. Not just for love, he was sure that for Merope, it was an opportunity for a new life too, and she had latched onto it with everything she had

Though he disagreed with her methods, he couldn’t blame her. Who knew what Harry himself would have done in similar straits? 

And Tom Riddle Senior, to have been befuddled by his wife, and later leave her a few months later… it was also understandable on his part. But nothing made it any less than the tragedy it was.

His next lesson with Dumbledore, months later, only confirms his suspicions.

When he hears about Merope’s diminishing will to live upon her husband’s abandonment, he is quick to ask why she wouldn’t stay alive for the son she was expecting.

Dumbledore is surprised at his fervour and asks if he feels sorry for Voldemort, and both he and Harry are surprised when Harry answers with a simple, “Yes.”

But honestly, when Harry thinks about his mother, who had fought so hard to give him a chance to live, and thinks of a young Tom, who might not have turned the way he did if he had had someone, anyone to love him, he just feels sad.

They both follow along Dumbledore’s memory further, as he walks to an orphanage. They are introduced to Mrs Cole, who shares Tom’s earliest history; that of his birth, and his mother’s death.

Tom Marvolo Riddle, he was named, for his father, and his grandfather, and the weight of his history forever entrenched.

Mrs Cole describes Tom’s suspicious behaviour, how mysterious incidents happen around him, tormenting the children around him. She takes them to Tom, afterwards and Harry is almost but not-quite surprised at the sight of an eleven year old Tom Riddle. 

He was quiet and self possessed, and his face held a maturity not meant for someone so young.

Harry watches Tom and a younger Dumbledore interact, how Tom’s caution (wariness) and confidence (imperiousness) were already present even at such a young age. 

But it was Tom’s reaction to magic, that broke Harry’s heart.

During his own introduction to magic, once he’d gotten past the disbelief, Harry had felt, for the first time in his life, child-like wonder and awe. The wizarding world was incredible, special, and he was part of it too, no longer tied to just the Dursleys and the horrible life they’d given him.

He can see the same longing in Tom, for a place to belong, a place to be loved.

Tom’s excitement about his magic, the things he could do, broke Harry’s heart further. It was the first time he had seen Tom so incandescently _happy_ , and he doubted he would ever see it again.

But Dumbledore’s memory didn’t look very happy; as he proved when he lit Tom’s wardrobe on fire. 

Tom howled with shock and rage, jumping to his feet immediately, his eyes hard even as the flames disappeared and the wardrobe unharmed. Harry wonders if Dumbledore had seen the grief and loss in Tom’s expression before he’d hidden it away entirely.

Dumbledore reprimanded him for his thievery, what he would later call Tom’s magpie-like tendency to collect trophies, before informing him of the laws of the wizarding world he would have to abide by. 

There was another hint at Tom’s nature, his subtle irritation about the barman Tom who shared his name. 

Tom also mentioned his hidden talent of talking to snakes, and the memory Dumbledore shows a hint of surprise at this, before waving it off.

When they discuss the memory further, Dumbledore notices a number of things Harry had himself; Tom’s longing to be special and unique, beyond what other people were; his independence and solitary nature, unexpected for one so young; and his tendency to collect trophies. In Dumbledore’s words, all of these facts were noted in the worst sense, connecting the young Tom Riddle to the now cruel and domineering Lord Voldemort.

However, Dumbledore does not make any mention of some of the other things Harry had noticed, and made note of himself. 

Though Tom had been clean and tidy, there were still marks Harry could see under his sleeves, bruises Harry was very familiar with himself from his time with Dudley. 

That Tom’s longing to be unique and special, was all too similar with Harry’s growing up, when he was all too used to being treated as insignificant and worthless. 

That Tom’s collection of trophies would make more sense if they were also trophies of vengeance. Harry himself had kept a fair few of Dudley’s things that he could sneak out, as a way to win over his cousin who had everything else he wanted.

But Harry says none of it at all.

He did not sympathise with Voldemort, no. But he did feel a kinship for Tom Riddle, who seemed more similar to Harry’s younger self than he could have ever known.

The voice is quiet in a way it usually isn’t, its silence oddly intentional.

It does not react to his quiet realizations until late into the night, when Harry is almost asleep, still thinking about the memories he saw.

A quiet _Thank you_ is all Harry hears before he falls asleep.

  
~

Months pass before their next lesson.

The sight of Tom as Harry once knew him, sixteen and impressive, from the perspective of Morfin’s memory, is somewhat surprising.

Harry watches as Tom finds out about his father’s abandonment of his mother and wonders what he thinks. Harry had once been desperate to learn more about his own parents, to believe that they cared about him and loved him even if no one else did. 

Tom, he thinks, was likely the same, recalling Dumbledore’s words on Tom’s obsession with his parentage. 

But finding out the reality of his parents, that one was a weak-willed almost-Squib who barely lived after giving birth to him, and another was a Muggle who abandoned his mother and him before he was even born… 

How had Tom felt, learning that?

Dumbledore continues where the memory left out, detailing the murder of the Riddle family, and Tom’s (and consequently Morfin’s) role in it.

Harry wonders what had driven Tom to murder his father and grandparents. Had it really been a hatred of Muggles? Or had it been a hatred of the Muggles, the _family,_ that had abandoned him?

But before he can ponder it any further, Dumbledore invites him into the next memory, the most important one.

This memory showed Slughorn, and a cohort of boys around him, including Riddle, but in the middle of it, a strange fog descended, disappearing with as little warning as its arrival.

None of the earlier memories had been like this.

The memory continued as usual, before Riddle, the last person left in the room with Slughorn, brought up a question.

He asked Slughorn about ‘Horcruxes’.

The memory is interrupted again by Slughorn’s voice, berating Riddle for the question, his voice getting louder and angrier, until the memory is disrupted completely. Dumbledore reveals that the memory has been tampered with and sets Harry a new task, of recovering the true memory from Slughorn.

At their next meeting, Harry has failed to get the memory, but Dumbledore shows him two others anyway.

Harry drinks in all the facts about Tom that Dumbledore offers with fascination; most notably, the fact that Tom had once wanted to teach at Hogwarts. One of the reasons, perhaps, Dumbledore offers, was because of his attachment to the school, the place he was happiest, the place he felt at home; Harry understands that point uncomfortably well, because Hogwarts, to him, is his home too.

The next memory, viewed from a house-elf named Hokey, details the meetings between Tom and her mistress, a woman named Hepzibah Smith.

Hepzibah Smith was, in his opinion, unbearably charmed by Tom, though he couldn’t blame her, for Tom looked more handsome than ever, older than Harry had last seen him. Hepzibah Smith was so very enamoured that she showed Tom her greatest treasures, not even noticing the glint of red in his eyes as he looked over them one by one.

Dumbledore informs him that Hepzibah died not two days after this memory, and it occurs to Harry that this Tom, even more than the one he’d seen in the previous memory who’d already murdered his father and paternal grandparents, or the Tom he’d met in the Diary, who had let him in close and betrayed him, nearly killing him and Ginny, was closer to Voldemort than ever before.

The next memory showed an older Tom, one who was halfway to becoming Voldemort, meeting with Dumbledore. 

He watches as Tom– as _Voldemort_ , he admits, because there is but the smallest hint of Tom in this Voldemort– tries to get the Defence Against the Dark Arts post. Dumbledore refuses him, and Harry is sure that right then, he is watching the birth of Lord Voldemort, the last hints of Tom Riddle fading away, just like that.

It is unsurprising to learn that Voldemort had cursed the DADA post after he had been refused. It was, however, one of the things he could have believed _Tom_ would do, rather than Voldemort.

Perhaps Voldemort releasing himself from the anchor that Hogwarts was to him, a home, a place he belonged to and cared for, is the real mark of his transition from Tom to Lord Voldemort. 

Hogwarts could claim to be the only thing Voldemort ever loved, at least once.

~

As soon as he obtains the memory from Slughorn, Harry heads straight for Dumbledore.

They delve into the memory, and this time, it is perfect.

After the last memory so clear in his head of Voldemort shedding the last parts of Tom Riddle, it is a surprise to see Tom’s handsome face again, controlled and more considerate.

Slughorn explains exactly what a Horcrux is to Tom, and Harry can’t help but reel back in horror.

A Horcrux, simply put, was an object that contains a split part of a person’s soul, effectively ensuring that a person can come back even after being killed, as their soul would still be tethered to the world via the Horcrux.

Slughorn’s expertise on the subject is clear, as is his discomfort with Tom’s eagerness. 

Harry notes the method of creation with no surprise, especially with how unnatural a Horcrux is. It would take an act of supreme violence like murder to create such a violation of nature.

It’s not only Slughorn that grows increasingly uncomfortable with Tom’s questions; Harry himself can feel his stomach churning with dread. And then Tom asks the unthinkable, about splitting the soul not once, but seven times, and Slughorn’s face is a mirror for Harry’s own horror. 

Dumbledore confirms Harry’s speculation that a Horcrux is the reason why Voldemort didn’t die when he attacked Harry so many years ago. 

On top of that, it seemed likely that Voldemort had not stopped at creating one, but made six instead, splitting his soul into seven as he’d planned since he was barely Harry’s age. 

The proof, Dumbledore says, is the diary that Harry had handed to him after the Chamber of Secrets fiasco. Voldemort’s carelessness with it suggested that he had more than one safeguard from death, given his treatment of the diary.

Dumbledore has theories of what the Horcruxes could be, what other objects could be hiding Voldemort’s soul. 

He noted them as having special significance to Voldemort himself, or to Hogwarts, as the only home he ever acknowledged; his Diary, the first of them, proof that he was the heir of Slytherin; his grandfather’s ring, both proof of his heritage and trophy; Slytherin’s locket, once his mother’s and what he considers rightfully his own; Hufflepuff’s cup, a link to the school he loved so much, an item of Ravenclaw’s if he managed to find one; and lastly, his snake, another connection to his Slytherin heritage and arguably his closest companion.

Harry manages to get Dumbledore’s agreement to take him to destroy the next Horcrux he finds.

Armed with the assurance that Voldemort would die without his Horcruxes, like any other man, that Voldemort had set on course his own doom by targeting Harry, handing to him the weapons Harry could use to destroy him, Harry leaves.

It is only when he has arrived at his dorm, slid into bed ready to sleep, that he remembers a throwaway comment Dumbledore made, about Voldemort’s unusual connection to Nagini, and his preceding question about whether animals could be used as horcruxes, and Dumbledore’s ensuing confirmation, with an added detail of the risk, and he realizes–

Nagini isn’t the only one with an unusual connection to Voldemort.

He remembers Dumbledore’s comments, year after year, when he asked about his scar, his connection to Voldemort, when he finally learned about the prophecy.

Dumbledore had all but told him, ‘Voldemort had put a piece of himself inside him’, ‘Voldemort had forged a connection between them.’

Harry was a Horcrux.

Harry was a Horcrux, and Dumbledore had known, all this time.

Harry holds _a part of Voldemort’s soul inside him_ , tying him to life.

_He is with me wherever I go,_ he remembers Quirrell saying, and tries not to shudder at the thought that this situation felt all too similar.

This was worse than being an unwitting spy, worse than being a weapon, worse even than being possessed.

He can’t bear to close his eyes under the weight of all these revelations but something pulls him down anyway.

He wakes up to that world of shadows he’d dreamt of once before, and a very familiar face.

“The connection between me and Voldemort,” Harry says, repeating Tom’s words from their very first talk, before shaking his head and laughing mirthlessly. “You really didn’t lie to me, did you, Tom? Or should I say, Voldemort?”

Riddle raises an eyebrow. “Call me what you like,” he replies, unmoved. Adding provocatively, “You know who I am.”

“I’m a Horcrux.”

“So you’ve finally realized.” Riddle’s tone is dismissive.

“That’s what you are, the Horcrux, or some sort of representation for it.” 

Riddle claps, looking bored. “Gold star, hero. It only took you so long.”

Harry scowls, eyes narrowed before they’re drawn to something he hadn’t paid much attention to last time. He stares at the scar stretching out across Riddle’s face, the one that matched his own so perfectly. 

“Ah yes,” Riddle says. “You can see it, can’t you... the scar that marked you. The scar that marked _us_. A symbol of your survival… and my failure.”

Harry remembers what Riddle had said during their conversation, about being with him all the time.

“Have you really been here watching me all this time?” he asks.

Harry doesn’t expect what Riddle does next; he laughs genuinely. 

“So what you said about protecting me, and comforting me–” Harry soldiers on, uncomfortable as he is “–was that true? _Why?_ ”

Riddle’s expression darkens briefly before it smooths over again. 

He steps closer to Harry, arrogance dripping from every movement. 

“Why not? What did I have to lose from it? What you should really be asking,” he adds slyly, “is why you _needed_ my protection and comfort in the first place.” 

“What are you talking about?”

“Dumbledore left you with _them_ , after all, knowing exactly what he was condemning you to. And why wouldn’t he? After all,” Riddle says darkly, “he’s done it before.”

Harry wants to protest, that Dumbledore isn’t the kind of person Riddle says he is but then–

“And as a Horcrux, well–” Riddle smirks, whispering right into his ear “–why would he have to care too much about you?”

And that brought Harry’s mind back to the point that he’d been ignoring so far.

That Dumbledore had known he was a Horcrux, and had no intention of telling him about it.

The words ‘neither can live while the other survives’ had lingered in his mind ever since he heard them in Dumbledore’s office for the first time.

When he’d first heard the prophecy, he’d asked Dumbledore if it meant one of them would have to kill the other, and Dumbledore had agreed.

Now he understands what Dumbledore had really meant.

Harry was Voldemort’s horcrux. He was tying Voldemort to life. As long as he lived, Voldemort would live too.

He had to die, for Voldemort to die.

And Dumbledore had known this.

~

It is the first meeting they’ve had since his discovery, and Harry has just found out that Snape is the one who had overheard the prophecy and sent that news to Voldemort, leading to the death of Harry’s parents.

Snape, who Dumbledore is still so keen on trusting.

He feels betrayed in an entirely different way than he had before. Dumbledore disregards his worries like he does every other time Harry’s brought them up and Harry just… doesn’t say anything.

_When were you going to tell me?_ Harry wants to ask, wants to scream. _When were you going to let me know that I would have to die? That I'm a part of him?_

But the thought of Dumbledore lying straight to his face, or hedging the way he had when Harry was younger and asking difficult questions stops him cold.

Dumbledore has a plan, he tells himself. He has to believe it.

_A plan involving your death,_ Riddle adds mockingly, _but he definitely has a plan_.

There is no time to dwell on that; tonight, Dumbledore is bringing them to find and destroy another horcrux.

For a second, he wonders if the Horcrux Dumbledore is taking him to destroy is Harry himself, but he shoves those thoughts away.

He relaxes when Dumbledore Apparates them to a cliffside just by the sea, a recognizable landmark from Voldemort’s past.

He tries to imagine a young Tom Riddle coming here, perhaps accompanied by a few other children, and wonders what it felt like for him.

_Cold,_ Tom admits, to the question he had not asked. _Lonely,_ in a quieter voice.

Dumbledore speaks some more about his assumptions of Tom’s actions here, how he’d probably tormented the children with him with the aid of his magic in this cold, desolate place.

They jump into the water and swim until they reach a large dark cave, ominous and eerie. The children must have been terrified. 

Dumbledore works his way through Voldemort’s defences, past the hidden entrance, across the lake of Inferi, to the little island in the middle where the Horcrux is.

In the middle of the island is a basin atop a pedestal, containing an emerald green liquid emitting a phosphorescent glow, the only source of light in the cave.

Dumbledore tries various ways to remove the liquid to no avail, coming to the realization that it must be drunk.

Harry tries to protest, only for Dumbledore to order him into feeding him the potion by force if he has to.

Dumbledore drinks, and drinks, and drinks, but less than halfway through the basin, he stops and staggers towards the basin, and immediately Harry knows something is wrong. 

He does not want to do this; Dumbledore already looks as if he’s suffering, but he has his orders, and so he ignores every protest Dumbledore gives him and continues feeding the potion, before Harry loses his nerve and pleads for Dumbledore to stop.

Dumbledore starts begging him to stop, and a part of Harry is horrified, terrified, to see _Dumbledore_ reduced to this, but another part is numb and knows what must be done, so he keeps on refilling the goblet again and again. 

Riddle is no help, only enjoying the sight of Dumbledore brought so low.

It gets worse close to the end, and when Dumbledore pleads for water, he jumps at the chance to provide some relief. Unfortunately, he has no choice but to get it from the lake, disturbing the Inferi.

He is saved by Dumbledore, wielding long whips of fire against the Inferi, and as soon as Dumbledore has retrieved the locket, they immediately make their way to the boat, across the lake and out of the cave.

Harry Apparates them back to Hogsmeade, worried for Dumbledore’s health, but then they are greeted with the Dark Mark looming in the sky above Hogwarts and they immediately set off. They land at the Astronomy Tower, directly under the Dark Mark itself. 

He is leaving to get Snape on Dumbledore’s orders when they hear footsteps, and suddenly Harry is petrified and Dumbledore disarmed. He realizes that Dumbledore was the one to immobilize him, a non-verbal spell, and in doing so, had prevented Dumbledore from defending himself.

Draco Malfoy is the one to greet them.

With some coaxing, Dumbledore convinces Malfoy into revealing all of his plans, what he’d done this year, how he found a way to let Death Eaters into Hogwarts. Malfoy seems both terrified and uncertain, keeping his wand pointed at Dumbledore throughout the exchange, like it’s the only thing keeping him safe.

For a moment, Harry thinks, hopes, Dumbledore has gotten to him, that Malfoy will surrender, but then the Death Eaters arrive and Malfoy is pushed out of the way. 

Could things get any worse? The Death Eaters start arguing over who should kill Dumbledore, while Harry is just _stuck there_ unable to do anything but watch, but then they agree that Malfoy has to be the one to do it, but he’s hesitating and things come to a head until–

Snape arrives.

And Dumbledore begs.

And Snape fires off the Killing Curse in return, and it hits Dumbledore, blasting him straight off the tower, right as Harry’s watching.

Dumbledore dies, and the last of Harry’s hope goes with him.

  
  



End file.
